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Additinal Credits

Sonja Van Meer: Sound Recordist

Video

Video #1, "Ceremony"

Video #2, "Religion at Home"

Video #3, "Parking Lot Program"

Photographer Statement

"Nitya Karma" is meant to be read with text, photos, motion .gifs, & video as equal parts of the story. My eventual goal is to use mixed media in conjunction with animation and web development to create more involved experiences of true stories. That idea coexists with another goal to produce more voyeuristic, transparent storytelling that embraces the camera's focus and movement as a first-person perspective. I want to give my audience a range of media that are less edited and more like primary source documents.

Additionally, this project is the longest I've stuck with a single subject. It's important and interesting to me because Kamal really was the one who initiated it. We first met when I was shooting an ESL class for refugees in Charlotte. He proactively invited me into his home and asked me to shoot some events. Then he continued to call me for almost two years before I left the city. For me to be able to tell a story about him as a proactive community leader feels really nice and appropriate since that's what facilitated the footage in the first place.

The viewer should note that motion .gifs are usually uploaded smaller than 1000 pixels to optimize file size, which affects load time. I output these images with the goal of keeping them under 1.5 MB, which means I had to compromise quality for load time. This .gif set is the result of numerous tests to render an image balanced between image quality, file size, and quality of motion.

License

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Caption:
Hindu priests read Sanskrit texts. Nitya Karma is the Hindu term for obligatory religious duties. For this group of Bhutanese Refugees in Charlotte, North Carolina, the idea implies beyond religion. Regular religious and cultural practice is a way to pass their heritage down to the next generation (see "Video #1").

In 2007 the UN Refugee Agency began relocating 83,000 Bhutanese refugees from Nepali camps to eight countries including the US. In Charlotte, North Carolina, the growing Bhutanese population has taken root. Their neighborhood in the urban sprawl off Charlotte's Independence Boulevard is regularly transformed into temples and shrines, sites where they fulfill their Nitya Karma, obligatory religious duties. Kamal Dhimal is a community leader who facilitates these cultural events as he, and his people, adjust to life in the US.

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Kevin Beaty | Nitya Karma: Obligations for Getting By in America | United States

Hindu priests read Sanskrit texts. Nitya Karma is the Hindu term for obligatory religious duties. For this group of Bhutanese Refugees in Charlotte, North Carolina, the idea implies beyond religion. Regular religious and cultural practice is a way to pass their heritage down to the next generation (see "Video #1").

Kevin Beaty | Nitya Karma: Obligations for Getting By in America | United States

Ethnically Nepali, this community lived in southern Bhutan for several generations before the government violently ousted them in 1989. Over one hundred thousand displaced Bhutanese lived in refugee camps in eastern Nepal until 2007, when the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) began relocating families to the US and seven other countries.

Kevin Beaty | Nitya Karma: Obligations for Getting By in America | United States

Practiced for two decades in exile, their traditions have been transplanted into a neighborhood off Charlotte’s Independence Boulevard. Programs like these are made possible by self-appointed community leaders like Kamal Dhimal (left).

Kevin Beaty | Nitya Karma: Obligations for Getting By in America | United States

Kamal Dhimal, his wife, Rupa, and daughter, Archana, in a portrait taken before leaving Nepal. They have been living in Charlotte since 2010. Dhimal loves his country, Bhutan, but his past, he says, is not worth dwelling on. He’d rather focus on his future.

Kevin Beaty | Nitya Karma: Obligations for Getting By in America | United States

He sits under a Bhutanese flag with Hasta Pradhan, a friend who works for a refugee resettlement agency run by the Catholic Diocese of Charlotte. Dhimal spends much of his free time working for his community. His daily obligations to his people stretch beyond religion. There’s always something to be done for his rapidly growing community.

Kevin Beaty | Nitya Karma: Obligations for Getting By in America | United States

It’s nearly 11pm on a Wednesday and Dhimal (left) and his nephew, Hari, wait on a flight carrying the latest of their friends and family relocating from Nepal.

Kevin Beaty | Nitya Karma: Obligations for Getting By in America | United States

After a few hours, the Dhakal family emerges from an elevator. New families arrive every month, if not every week, from thatched-roof jungle villages to the urban sprawl of this southern city.

Kevin Beaty | Nitya Karma: Obligations for Getting By in America | United States

Like many others, the Dhakal family has stepped off their first-ever flight with their whole lives packed into UN-issued duffels. Dhimal is here to welcome them home.

Kevin Beaty | Nitya Karma: Obligations for Getting By in America | United States

It’s a lively evening on Dhimal’s living room floor. His friends and family sing ancient songs known to all by heart. Dhimal organizes Hindu ceremonies like these in his neighborhood & home on a near-weekly basis (see Video #2).

Kevin Beaty | Nitya Karma: Obligations for Getting By in America | United States

Tradition gives Dhimal’s community something to hold in common as they each assimilate into jobs and schools within the larger Charlotte community. This is an opportunity to sing, eat, and sit together.

Kevin Beaty | Nitya Karma: Obligations for Getting By in America | United States

It also gives the elderly, who do not work, something to do. Dhimal worries about his older friends and relatives’ sedentary lifestyles. Unlike their children and grandchildren, most have not mastered English and do not often venture out of the subdivision, which is largely inhabited by other refugees and immigrants.

Kevin Beaty | Nitya Karma: Obligations for Getting By in America | United States

Concerned about depression in his community, Dhimal has called a meeting in his home with three mental health authorities from Charlotte. Perry Griffin (middle) is the Multicultural Advocate for the Central Carolinas Mental Health Association. Griffin reached out to Dhimal after a CDC study found that suicide rates in resettled Bhutanese communities were much higher than US and international averages. The rate of depression among resettled Bhutanese is almost three times higher than the general US population.

Kevin Beaty | Nitya Karma: Obligations for Getting By in America | United States

A 2012 CDC report suggests that Bhutanese communities in the US are more likely to be at risk for suicide because their resettlement coincided with the 2008 financial crisis. Inability to work, coupled with a language barrier and lack of long-standing support networks, left newcomers to a major US city isolated inside a few little neighborhoods.

Kevin Beaty | Nitya Karma: Obligations for Getting By in America | United States

Dhimal and other community leaders are helping to establish deep roots and support structures inside and out of the neighborhood. With his peoples’ health and happiness on the line, Dhimal has all the more reason to engage them.

Kevin Beaty | Nitya Karma: Obligations for Getting By in America | United States

Sometimes comfort comes from small details. Smells and sounds can be as powerful as words and prayers.

Kevin Beaty | Nitya Karma: Obligations for Getting By in America | United States

Even a parking lot can become a holy place (see Video #3).

Kevin Beaty | Nitya Karma: Obligations for Getting By in America | United States

Dhimal goes to great lengths to fulfill his traditional duty. Here he’s driven into the rolling country to buy a goat, usually only eaten for special occasions.

Kevin Beaty | Nitya Karma: Obligations for Getting By in America | United States

He has fully embraced his newfound rights to work, earn, and be socially mobile in America. But even though he only thinks of forward progress, most of his plans involve fostering old ways in his new home town.

Kevin Beaty | Nitya Karma: Obligations for Getting By in America | United States

The blood is collected to use later in cooking and hardly any part of the animal is wasted. This is cultural as well as nutritional sustenance.

Kevin Beaty | Nitya Karma: Obligations for Getting By in America | United States

Kevin Beaty | Nitya Karma: Obligations for Getting By in America | United States

Kevin Beaty | Nitya Karma: Obligations for Getting By in America | United States

Family is all-important. Dhimal relies on his brothers and sisters, nieces, nephews, and friends, just as they have come to rely on him. Together they celebrate, suffer, work, and play.

Kevin Beaty | Nitya Karma: Obligations for Getting By in America | United States

By fulfilling his obligations to his community, Dhimal has created a foundation that will serve them for a generation. Archana’s roots will be firmly planted in both Bhutan and America. Her father has worked hard to ensure she, and everyone else under his care, never feels displaced.

Kevin Beaty | Nitya Karma: Obligations for Getting By in America | United States